For many in the Flora London Marathon, the whole process of preparing for and running the race will have been tortuous. But there is a way to turn the whole thing from an urban endurance test to an experience of almost pure pleasure: don’t stop at 26.2 miles. Carry on past the finish line for another marathon. Then another. And finish on an almost-marathon to bring it up to 100 miles.
According to Chris McDougall, the author of Born To Run, a book that opens up the little-known world of ultra running, the only way to put fun and spontaneity into your running is to run marathons four at a time. “When you’re running a hundred, you’re going to be out there for about 13 hours, no matter what. It really doesn’t matter if that’s 13 hours 5 minutes or 13 hours 10 minutes. You have no choice but to take your time, relax and enjoy the landscape.”
And to make sure that you stay fully connected to that landscape, McDougall advises that you throw away your running shoes to tackle those 100 miles in bare feet.
Welcome to the world of ultra running, in which athletes cover distances up to 150 miles on mountain paths, woodland trails and undeveloped canyons, usually for no prizes and even less recognition. But, in this world, McDougall’s run-for-pleasure philosophy has credence, because races are social events rather than contests. The Fat Ass Fifties is a sports club that runs a series of almost impromptu events under the slogan “No Medals; No Winners; No Whiners”. Equally under the radar are the Californian women who continue to run the 100-mile races they’ve been doing for years, even though they’re now well into their sixties. And there are the Tarahumara, the stars of Born To Run, a Mexican tribe, pretty much hidden from the modern world and whose idea of a good day out is to run 150 miles through sweltering canyons, wearing homemade sandals.
McDougall stumbled into ultra running by accident. A former war correspondent with Associated Press he returned to the US as a magazine writer. While on assignment with Men’s Health he consulted two US barefoot running gurus, hoping to cure his persistent injuries. They took away his shoes, and taught him to run again from scratch. “They repositioned and rebalanced me, and I ran pain-free for the first time in my life. I could train up to a 50-mile race when before I couldn’t go five miles without hurting. I started to really enjoy it and went hog wild. I was entering 100-mile races and running 120 miles a week. I felt like there were no limits.”
Then a baffling injury occurred. McDougall was unable to run without severe pain in his heels and, secure in the knowledge that there was nothing wrong with his now-perfect running style, he solicited a spectrum of advice from trainers to podiatrists, to fascia experts. In Britain he visited Lee Saxby, a barefoot running coach, and still sounds slightly amazed as he recounts the meeting.
“Lee took a video of me and 30 seconds into it said ‘That’s it, I’ve got your problem solved.’ Because I’d started wearing running shoes again my style had regressed and I wasn’t aware of it. I thought that with my neutral shoes . . . there would be no difference, but there was still so much padding I’d lost perception of my posture. My back was leaning back, my foot was coming in front of my hips and I was landing on my heels. He adjusted my technique, the pain vanished and has not come back. But since then I’ve been scared straight, and only run in bare feet or in Vibram Five Fingers [basically a sock with a thin rubber grip on the underside]. I’m afraid to put running shoes back on.”
At this point McDougall made the connection between ultra and barefoot running, He realised that to run 100 miles you had to minimise the stress on all your body with a perfect, natural running action, and the only way to achieve that was without shoes. “I used to love running shoes,” he recalls. “I took it as heretical [that] there could be anything wrong them, but the logic finally dawned on me that bare feet were the greatest self-regulating device a runner could have. You can’t run too hard, too far or too fast. You’re not going to bash out a 10K before you’re ready — you can’t, your feet will be too tender. Thus you’re far less prone to injury, because as shoes hold you up artificially, you’ll stress other parts of the body. With bare feet you are restricted as you build up strength in your feet. So not only does it dictate exactly a healthy stride, but also a healthy progression of distance.”
What took McDougall to Mexico though, was not the mechanics but the spirit of ultra running. He saw a picture of a group of Tarahumara running in perfect step, with expressions of total serenity and a caption explaining that they were near the end of a 150-mile run. His reaction was “total indignation”. “I was 40 years old and was being told that running’s cumulative effect would be bad for my joints and I should stop. I looked at this picture of these old guys and thought ‘Why them and not me?’ What I found when I got there was people to whom running was totally natural, and had discovered that joyfulness and running go hand in hand: you can have a relaxed, stress-free, joyful day because of your running and if you are relaxed and stress-free you will run better. They knew ultra running as pleasure rather than perseverance.”
On McDougall’s evidence, the psyching yourself up for ultra running is more like a total absence of psyche. “There’s some sort of reverse psychology going on with ultra runners, where it’s not a question of psyching yourself up to do it, but freeing your psyche so as not to stop yourself from doing it. As kids, the Tarahumara run six-mile races, then as teenagers they progress to 150 miles, quite a jump. I asked one of them, Silvino, how he’d made the transition? He looked at me uncomprehendingly and said ‘I just knew I could do it.’ He’d never doubted that when it was time to run 150 he’d run 150 and that was that. The mindset was ‘I run. What’s the big deal?’
“We can all do it. As a species, I believe our moving parts are evolved to run those distances, and as we are all 99.9 per cent the same, it’s a matter of increasing fitness levels.”
History supports McDougall. Early homo sapiens survived by “endurance hunting”, literally chasing deer to death over distances of more than 100 miles. Anthropology shows how. Early homo sapiens separated themselves from chimpanzees with Achilles tendons and arched feet, features useful only for running; and from Neanderthals by developing the distance runner’s build — smaller, lighter and with the biggest muscles in the legs. Being able to control our stride/breath ratio, as opposed to quadrupeds’ set one-breath-per-stride, means we don’t get winded on long runs, while being the only mammal to keep cool primarily by sweating we are far less likely to overheat. McDougall believes it wouldn’t be so difficult to return to that state of affairs, if only we’d lighten up a bit.
We should approach running like we approach swimming — people don’t start swimming, then decide “Let’s swim the Channel”, so it never becomes work and we spend a lot of time in the water messing around.
“Runners should have the mentality to go out there with no expectations, do what feels good and use the opportun-ity to push a little bit farther to explore a little bit more. Use that as your incentive to run a little farther each week.”
Born to Run: The hidden tribe, the ultra runners, and the greatest race the world has never seen, by Christopher McDougall, is published by Profile at £16.99.
